Just enough German, French and Korean to buy a beer. Why? So I could buy a beer there.

English: I'm an american, and English is a good language to have living in USA :P
Spanish: Only course avaliable in our little ol' school
German: Just some passing knowledge, want to learn it since I'm going to travel to Europe and I'm an Austrophile

Just enough Spanish to tell the Spaniards that I'm allergic to peanuts. Why? So I wouldn't die from the first dish they served me.

I've learned French, but I wouldn't call myself fluent. It's pretty useful when you live in Canada.

Englishman here, and I have to admit I've only learnt schoolboy German, most of which I've forgotten.

English is native language.

French I have learned because it is a useful international language, also because I would like to be able to conduct myself in West Africa. The three languages you need for that are English French and Arabic. I might learn Arabic.

Language I will learn:

Wolof, because I am going to study abroad in Senegal and they speak Wolof there. Wolof classes are a required part of the curriculum.

I'd also love to learn Lingala, they speak that in the DRC.

I know enough Spanish to get around at the border, I live in Texas after all.

Native Tongue: English (Standard American English) I'm an American.

1st foreign language (and the only on that I've reached any degree of competency with) German. At least I was able to get around in Germany for a couple of weeks without embarrasing myself too bad. I only had on waiter get frustrated with me, the bartenders were great.

2nd foreign language Russian (I only took a year of Russian). I grew up in an era when the Russians were our considered great adversary, so it seemed sensible to attempt to learn their language. I've had a few students who were from Russian speaking nations over the past few years and I've only been able to entertain them rather than actually speak with them. One of them jokingly said "Mr. N. you speak Russian better than all of the other Russian speaking teachers at this school". I asked her how many of the other teachers spoke Russian and she smiled and replied "None".

I'd like to learn Spanish. As an educator I see students who speak Spanish as their native tongue more than any other language, so it makes sense to learn a least a bit of that language.

German - just enough to get around Germany, order in a restaurant or bar, be polite to people, and communicate with shop keeps. All very broken but worked when I spoke it and made reading train schedules and menus reasonably easy. Spent a couple weeks in Lindau in '05 and several more in '06

Haha I should note the only employ I ever got out of my years of French so far was to get through customs in Benin and to order some apple juice in Charles de Gaulle. Haha

I forgot to mention American English as my native tongue and picked up some of the phrases for the various UK dialects of English watching MI-5, Doctor Who, and Torchwood as well as the old Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes produced by Granada.

And do computer programming and OS languages count? I've got BASIC in nearly all it's forms all the way back to the TRS-80's BASIC and AppleBASIC to the latest VB.Net. COBOL, RPG II & III, Fortran, OS-JCL, xBase/Foxpro, DOS, Linux, Pascal, SQL in several flavors, C/C++/C#, Java (certified), MS's flavor of Java called J#, LotusScript, XML/XSLT, DHTML, Javascript, VBScript, and I'm sure there are others I've just forgotten the names of but would come back to me if thrust into an environment that used them.

American English is my native language. I speak broken Spanish, but I am trying to improve on it. I will soon begin to learn German, and plan to learn Russian after that.

@Draug - well at best several of those are dialects! :P

American English is my native tongue. I took some Spanish and am good enough to attempt conversation. I would like to learn German or Arabic though. Why Spanish? My parents forced me too because it seems like that will eventually become the second official language of the USA. All the labels on foods, billboards, and even some street signs are in Spanish now

I tried to group the programming dialects together. :-P

I'm learning Mandarin for my fiance. I feel like I'm missing a lot by not speaking her first language, so I want to learn it enough to understand her.

Wow that is hardcore Stukus.. good luck.

American English as my first language.

Could probably survive through a conversation in German, but it's been a while since I spoke it.

First language: UK English

I did French at school because I wanted to study a language, and did pretty well, but I'm not too confident speaking it. I did a very small amount of Russian, from which I remember the occasional word and the alphabet. I did that just because I could. And recently I started Japanese because I would like to work in translating novels, etc.

@ abgemacht

It's probably just your username, but I always thought you were German.

I'm trying to learn German, half because a portion of my family came from Germany and Austria and half because I want to read the philosophies of Nietzsche and Wittgenstein in their original languages...along with other German lit and opera...anyone know a good online (non-pay) program?

haha yeah, a lot of people seem to think I'm German. It's odd if you think about, because nobody thinks Thucy is greek, or obi is a Jedi, or Draug is an Uraki (well, maybe...)

@obi

Buy/Torrent Rosetta Stone. It's by far the best SW you can get for learning a language.

Born speaking English

i can speak the following- male and sarcasm
In german class right now. actually the president of German club. but i speak it liek a 2 year old. i want to learn it because i love the culture and want to live there for at least 4 years.

i would like to learn the following. Woman- so that i can get a sandwich, and whatever african language has all those clicky noises

Learning foriegn languages is easy. Even the most idiotic of Frenchmen have learned to speak passable French. The trouble is it's painfully time consuming and soon forgotten when not used, so it's really one of the most pointless things you can do (especially if you live in Somerset and the closest you get to a multilingual situation is when the weather conditions allow for Welsh local radio signals to sneak over the water and play havoc with your car stereo).

I have learned schoolboy French, German and Spanish, and never encountered a single situation when they have been useful. The only language I wish I'd studied for at school is Latin, which would have been wonderfully useful when taking physics at university.

Learning French (pretty good at it, can carry on conversation, order lunch, and get by) and Latin (not so much speaking but memorizing words and figuring out correlations between the Romance languages and English). This is my 3rd year in a class and I worked off some FSI tapes (things they use in the military for language learning, Rosetta Stone is a dumbed-down version of these) and with Latin I do it out of a book.


I'd like to learn Italian, sounds nice and flowy like French.

Born speaking english (american, but working on the queen's tongue). Learnt a bit of german, but not enough to achieve much. Same with spanish. I can get directions, say my name, and ask for someone who speaks english, the bare minimum for any foreign language.

@Oct - Where in Zommerzet you from? I'm Brizzle :D

I think its a real shame schools in the UK focus on the languages of Western Europe, when to teach something like Mandarin or BSL (British Sign Language) would be much more useful.

I'm very suspect of everyone claiming they were "born" speaking a language.

@ Figle

I'm down in Midsomer Norton, famous for our horse tranquilizer drugs problem and hosting the least impressive carnival on any of the circuits! Speaking of which, I think it should be this thursday. Time to see if I can break my record of most lightbulbs broken in a thirty minute period :D!!